


On The Existence of RESETS (and other pointless philosophical questions)

by obiwanbanana66



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Agender Frisk, At least that's what I think will happen, Bad Puns, Female Chara, Flowey Is A Dick, Frisk Doesn't Remember Resets, Frisk doesn't cause resets, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I wanted to do humor, Meta, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route - "I want to stay with you.", Sans knows about resets, Very meta ending, also i can't title, but my area is angst, children could be reading this, despite the style of these tags the story is not in Sans POV, i am impressed, so maybe that's what'll happen, that was a very specific tag that people have used, who is writing this thing, who knows - Freeform, wow you want to use that word in the tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 07:06:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11527089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obiwanbanana66/pseuds/obiwanbanana66
Summary: Flowey keeps acting like Frisk has the power to reset. Like they ought to erase their life in an instant.Thankfully, Frisk knows this is ridiculous. That power doesn't even exist. In fact, they've only ever seen it in video games....Wait.





	On The Existence of RESETS (and other pointless philosophical questions)

Before falling into a monster-filled abyss, Frisk would never have asked themselves if a flower needed therapy. Now, they wouldn’t put anything past this crazy universe.

It was a beautiful summer night. A honeysuckle-scented breeze floated through the open window, toying with the curtains and maintaining a delicious subterranean temperature. New New Home was the perfect mix of underground and aboveground. Frisk lay sprawled on their bed, looking sleepily forward to their dance lessons tomorrow, and would have marked this as the perfect home if not for one thing.

“Aren’t things around here so _predictable_?”

Frisk groaned and buried their head under the pillow. Flowey was always spouting nihilistic nonsense, but this past week it’d been worse than usual.

“Everything is so boring. You go to school. When you don’t go to school, you go to dance ‘lessons.’ And if not dance, it’s kung fu or piano or something else just as insipid.” Flowey’s voice grated through the cotton. “Don’t you ever wish it were more exciting?”

“No,” Frisk said, without moving the pillow.

A brief moment of silence. A moment, Frisk knew all too well, which would not last long.

“You’re lying.” They could pretty much hear the horrific smile spreading over Flowey’s face. Sighing, Frisk removed the pillow and rolled onto their back.

“No, I’m not.”

“Don’t think you can fool me. I know what it’s like to have such unfathomable power. You can’t resist the temptation to use it. Sooner or later, you’ll give in. Sooner or later, you’ll LISTEN TO ME.” A shrieking cackle.

Frisk sat up and chucked the pillow across the room. Flowey shrieked and lurched to the side, scooting his pot an inch to the left and barely missing the pillow as it thumped into the wall. Frisk leapt out of bed as the picture of all their friends teetered on the edge of the bookshelf, then plunged toward the floor. They leapt toward it, but was too late. The glass shattered.

“You idiot!” Flowey hissed. “That could have been me!”

Frisk could have said many things in that moment, but settled for a disgruntled glare. They gingerly stepped around the broken glass to pick up the frame. It was barely scratched. The photo was unharmed.

Flowey had crossed his leaves. “I bet you were aiming for me, weren’t you? I know you’re sick of me being here. Why don’t you just KILL ME?”

Frisk treated him to another glare as they flicked on the light. “You’re really not the best roommate, you know.”

Flowey muttered something about not asking to be there. Frisk acknowledged that was true, but said nothing.

“Too bad about your picture,” Flowey sneered. “If only there were only some way you could go back in time and fix it.”

Frisk had been about ready to go in search of a dustpan, but this was the last straw. They turned around with their hands on their hips. “What is this about?”

“You know what.” Flowey’s face split into a menacing grin again. “You’re just too weak to acknowledge it. You’re lying to yourself.”

Frisk squinted, considering. “Is this about that reset stuff?”

Flowey’s petals tensed backward. “Do you think it’s about ‘reset stuff’? What else would I be referring to? You really are an idiot.”

Frisk shrugged. “Maybe I am. But so are you, because I’ve told you I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Flowey bared his teeth. In the dim light he looked like the stuff of nightmares. Frisk had gotten used to it. “It’s fine with me if you want to be so intolerable. But someday you’ll succumb. And when that day comes, I’ll laugh in your stupid little face!”

Frisk gave him a long stare, and stepped into the hallway. The lights were on dim; Toriel usually kept them toned down in case Frisk needed to come out for a glass of water or something similar. As they walked into the foyer, they could hear Toriel’s and Sans’ voices in the next room. They were just low enough that Frisk couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they sounded happy.

They really couldn’t understand what Flowey was on about. As far as Frisk knew, they’d run away from Ebbott Orphanage, climbed the mountain, entered a cave looking for shelter, and fallen down a deep hole. From there on they’d managed somehow to survive countless attacks from monsters who were convinced they were trying to kill them. Once they’d learned that wasn’t the case, everyone had been downright pleasant. Then they’d faced Flowey in a terrifying form – so terrifying they sometimes wondered if they’d imagined it all – and then he’d inexplicably morphed into the love child of Toriel and Asgore. Frisk still wasn’t sure how that worked. Anyway, they’d woken up surrounded by their friends, and if it hadn’t been for the broken barrier, they really would have thought it was all a dream. Now they were on the surface living ordinary lives. Sans was happy. Papyrus was happy. Toriel was happy. Heck, everyone except Flowey was happy!

Frisk stood by the stairs in thought. If it hadn’t been for the goat thing, they wouldn’t even have known that Flowey hadn’t withered away to dust. If it weren’t for the whole love child thing, they wouldn’t have felt like they ought to have kept him with them. And as Sans had put it, they’d have a bad time trying to get a flower arrested, so it probably wouldn’t be a flora-ible idea to keep an eye on the homicidal plant. So it was pot arrest for what had (maybe) once been Asriel Dreemur.  
Except for Flowey’s constant grumbling, life was perfect. Why would Frisk want to reset it? And what would that even mean? What was a reset? What did it mean to save? Or load?

Frisk entered the living room to find Toriel in her chair and Sans at the table, drinking from a bottle of ketchup. He winked as Frisk came in. “What’s up, kiddo?”

“The ceiling,” Frisk said without a moment’s hesitation. Sans’ skeletal grin widened, and Toriel laughed even though she’d heard that joke so many times it was practically a greeting at this point.

“My child. What are you doing awake at this time? Is it too cold in your room?”

Frisk shook their head. “I need a dustpan.”

“A dustpan?” Toriel blinked. “Whatever for?”

They hesitated for a moment. “I broke the picture frame.”

“Again?” The lights behind Sans’ eyes were quizzical. “How often do you throw things at us, kiddo? Are we really that…smashing?”

Frisk rolled their eyes. “No. Flowey wouldn’t stop talking again.”

Sans and Toriel looked at each other. “My child…” Toriel stood up and gave Frisk a hug. “I can always move Flowey to a different location. If he will not let you sleep, I cannot allow him to continue to rest in the same room as you.”

Her paw rested on their shoulder, as gentle and caring as ever. But Sans’ smile was tense, and even without looking they knew he was staring intently at them. They felt something crawling on their back. It freaked them out. They drew a bit closer to Toriel. “He’s okay. If I need him to move, I can do it.”

Maybe it was because it was so late, but they thought they saw something blue behind Sans’ left eye. “My place is pretty flower-less at the moment. I could take him off your hands.”

“No.” They hadn’t meant it to come out so curt. For a moment, they and Sans just stared at each other. They swallowed and crossed their arms. “Well, you can’t take him off my hands…right now. He’s on my shelf.”

The blue faded, and Sans winked. Frisk still felt the crawling. “If you say so. I guess I wouldn’t want to cause a flower outage.”

Toriel glanced from the child to the skeleton. “In that case, I’ll fetch the dustpan.” She smiled. “It will only take a moment.” She moved into the kitchen, leaving Sans and Frisk staring at each other.

Sans took another swig of ketchup. “I guess it won’t make any difference if I ask what’s so special about Flowey, huh?”

Frisk shook their head. Sans had asked them that about fifty times since they’d first insisted on keeping Flowey with them after the barrier broke. Sans seemed to think Flowey would be safer with him. For some reason, Frisk disagreed.

Besides, every time they thought of getting rid of Flowey, they just… _couldn’t_. Something held them back. It seemed wrong. But in the way that throwing out your favorite pair of socks was wrong. They supposed that they could do it if they had to. But until they figured some stuff out, they didn’t want to do it yet.

Stifling a yawn, they leaned on the child-sized chair at the end of the table. “Has Flowey seen Papyrus playing video games?”

Sans slurped the ketchup. “I think you brought him along once or twice. Why? He longing for Skyward Sword or something?”

“No.” Frisk wrinkled their nose, considering their next words carefully. They liked Sans. Sans was awesome. But he didn’t seem to like video games, which wouldn’t have had any bearing on the conversation whatsoever if it weren’t for that weird terminology Flowey was using. Still, he was the smartest person they knew, and probably had the best shot at figuring this out. They watched him carefully. “He keeps talking about resets.”

Sans’ face did not change. “What about ‘em?”

Frisk shrugged. The crawling intensified. Maybe New New Home was a bit too cold. “He won’t say. He keeps dropping hints, like I ought to know what he’s talking about.”

Over the six months since they’d freed the monsters, Frisk had become adept at reading skeletal faces. Which seemed absurd when they really stopped to think about it, but they’d learned not to question things like this. And they were sure this time that the lights behind Sans’ eyes got slightly – very slightly – dimmer.

“Well,” he said. “Do you?”

They shook their head again. “I know what they are in video games. But no one has that power in real life. That’s ridiculous.”

Well. Here they were talking to a skeleton. But the point still stood.

The lights returned to their normal brightness. “Well then. Sounds like he’s not giving you any anthers.”

Frisk blinked. “I don’t get it.”

The smile grew wider. “Don’t you know flower biology?”

“No I don’t – why do _you_ know flower biology?”

Sans merely shrugged and winked. “Don’t cramp my style.”

Frisk stared long and hard. “Is that even a pun?”

“Well, it does stem from something.”

Frisk facepalmed. “You’re not usually this hard to understand.”

“Hey now. No need to get pistil-ed off.”

Toriel stepped back into the living room, dustpan in hand. “Sans! Mind your language, please!” She clucked her tongue at him, but Frisk could see her smirking. She patted their head and smiled down at them. “Let me take care of the broken glass. I don’t want you getting hurt. Did you and Sans clear up the Flowey situation?”

Frisk shrugged. “I think he might be crazy. Do any therapists around here specialize in flowers?”

Toriel seemed to actually consider this for a second. “I don’t think so…”

Frisk glanced at Sans. The creepy vibe seemed to have dissipated. Maybe they’d imagined it, after all. “Alright. Well, thanks for the help.”

“No problem.” Sans winked. “Maybe next time you can stamen to talk about them longer.”

Frisk stuck out their tongue. “I wasn’t thanking you. Your idea of helping is petal-thetic.”

He put up his hands. “Now that cuts to the bone.”

Toriel tried to look stern and epically failed. Even Frisk had a hard time keeping a straight face. Flowey was ridiculous, they decided as they sat on their bed, watching Toriel sweep up the glass. She had insisted they did this to keep from cutting their feet. Everyone here cared about each other. Who in their right mind would want to reset, even if they could?

The glass was done away with, and Toriel kissed Frisk goodnight for a second time. She even gave Flowey a civil “Good night,” which he pointedly ignored. Frisk put the pillow back over their head, but as it turned out, they hadn’t needed to. Flowey stayed sulkily silent the rest of the night.

It wasn’t until they were on the edge of falling into sleep that they heard a whisper, so quiet it could have been part of their subconscious.

“You’re still here, Chara. I know you are. Stop playing pretend and wake up already.”

Even stranger was the voice that echoed from the base of their skull, just before the dreams began and they forgot where they were.

_I’m going to._

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! So I wrote this instead of sleeping. (1) I cannot title. So help with that. (2) I have very little plans. Just beginning plans and ending plans. So where would you like to see this story go? (3) Any ships? Chips? Death grips? (4) Still tired over here. (5) Thanks for reading!


End file.
